On-Premises Exchange Vs. Office 365

Aftab Alam
Updated On - 24 Jan 2019

Exchange Server has always dominated the email server market with about 75% of the market share. It has continuously brought new features to provide best services to its customers. Since cloud services began to dominate the market, Exchange Server is continually facing a stiff competition from Office 365 in terms of market share.

If you see the pattern in which organizations adopt cloud technologies, you can easily deduce that Office 365 is gaining more acceptance and soon it will be the more significant player than the Exchange Server.
So, if you are in a dilemma that which platform is better and suitable for your organization, then here is a detailed list of features, pros, and cons of both platforms.

Exchange Server (On-premises)

Exchange Server (on-premises) is available for purchase along with client access licenses. You only need to deploy sufficient hardware and install Exchange and clients as per your needs.

Advantages

The organization has total authority over the hardware and software of the Exchange. You can easily configure the specifications or settings and manage the mailboxes and mail flow.

You have total control over system updates, backup, and restore of the data. The on-premises environment enhances the quality of data management.

You can integrate many other business applications with the Exchange Server.

You can archive the emails at the desired location and use advanced search facilities.

You can easily upgrade your security plans.

Due to the proximity of Server, the throughput and access time for the mailbox is quite high. Any bad network connection can be easily fixed.

Disadvantages

Maintenance and upgrade of the hardware and software is expensive.

There should be an on-site Exchange administrator responsible for managing the mailboxes, stopping the unauthorized access, and recovering the deleted/corrupt mailboxes.

The initial installation requires high investment.

You need to get expertise in multiple IT skills like DNS Services, firewalls, and Active Directory to implement Exchange Server.

Office 365

Office 365 is subscription-based cloud platform from Microsoft. There are multiple plans which you can subscribe based on your needs. Unlike Exchange Server, Office 365 is available in different plans like Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal, and Office 365 Education.

Advantages

You can get many essential services like Exchange Server, Skype for Business, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, Skype, etc.

All the facilities are available instantly.

You do not need to pay for any updates.

Microsoft does all the hardware and software updates at their end, and it does not affect the business functioning.

Cloud platform reduces your on-site expenditures which you can invest in other resources.

Disadvantages

You are unaware of the location of your data. Microsoft has data centers in different parts of the globe, and you are completely unaware of the location of your data.

Final Words

When you compare both the platforms (Exchange Server and Office 365), it would be quite hard to find that which one is better. It all depends on your professional needs. The Kernel has multiple tools to meet the requirements of Exchange and Office 365 users – torecover corrupt exchange database, migrate to different platforms, and back up data. For such requirements, you can try tools like Kernel for Exchange Server, Kernel Migrator for Exchange, Kernel Office 365 Backup & Restore, etc.